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I have something amazing I would like to share with you. Something that will completely change the way you attract clients to your business forever.

It starts with an understanding of the structure you have created for your marketing. Everything in the Universe starts with a structure. From the great cosmos to the tiniest of cells, structure is what gives organization and pattern to everything.

The development of New York City started with a structure. They started with an outline of the streets and a grid, the buildings and businesses and housing came after the structure was put in place to sustain life.

First came the structure, then came life.

Your business, particularly your marketing systems, work the same way. Your ultimate, long-terms success starts with the structure you put in place right now. In marketing this is your marketing funnel. Many of us skip this step and just start networking and advertising and deal with prospects one at a time as we meet them.

I caution you this is a terminal mistake!

And while this way of obtaining clients may work for a little while, it ultimately isn’t sustainable because there is no underlying structure to sustain the growth. There is no foundation.

The good news is I have spent the last year focusing on how to help you create your own marketing funnel in an easy to manage way that leads to consistent profits. A marketing system that follows Universal Law, is spiritually sound, and that is proven to work for all types of businesses.

To start with, click here to download for free our brand new report: A Three-step Guide to Crafting your Marketing Funnel. This is a 16 page, in-depth training, complete with a do-it-yourself questionnaire that guides you through the marketing funnel process on your own.

In the report we’ve also included some training on the top three mistakes marketers make and how to avoid them. These mistakes are completely preventable if you know what to look for!

I get it that marketing funnels aren’t glamorous and fun. It’s common for folks to put off creating theirs because they don’t understand them or don’t have time to invest in building them.

I caution you not to do this — if your marketing doesn’t have a solid foundation and structure in place you will continue to struggle and your business will not grow! It can’t grow.

I implore you to take the time now to download and read this free report. I’ve made this guide easy to understand, simplified the marketing process, and walk you through step-by-step how to quickly create a marketing funnel on your own.

There is a self-guide to discover your weak points and tips for taking action to fix them quickly and seamlessly.

All business is a structure and as such, needs a strong foundation to build and grow from.

The definition of a structure is to construct or arrange according to a plan; give a pattern or organization to. We do this in all aspects of our business, and our life.

From the methods you use to serve your clients to the marketing and sales you produce to attract your ideal clients, it’s your job to create effective and sustainable structures for your business. It’s the difference between running your business by chance or by strategy.

The thing is, most of us don’t know how to do this. We know how to heal, how to teach, how to create. Not how to sell and create a system that pre-qualifies prospects!

One of the most important structures you make in your business is your marketing funnel. I know it may sound boring, but, marketing is a necessary evil for all businesses, regardless of who you are or what you do.

Let’s take a quick look at the structure of an effective marketing funnel.

There are three components to every successful marketing structure or marketing funnel:

Initial Exposure.

Capture and Flow.

Purchase and Retain.

If you don’t have a specific, proven and repeatable way to fulfill each of these three components in your marketing funnel you will continue to work harder than you need to. You will struggle to make enough money to pay your bills. You will be on the constant search for new clients, and often the clients you do have will not be your ideal clients. Soon you will not be enjoying your business and become frustrated with yourself.

These mistakes are easily fixable if you know how to initially set up your marketing correctly. Your business will grow in a more organic and fluid way if you have these specific structures in place now. How do you know if your marketing structures doesn’t have a strong foundation?

If you are struggling to make the money you know you are worth

If you are attracting clients, but they aren’t the ‘right’ clients. They don’t pay on time. They don’t refer you. They haggle over price.

You are spending most of your time looking for clients and networking endlessly and to doing the actual work that you love.

Waiting tends to suck. No one wants to do it and yet, we all end up waiting at one time or another.

There’s two types of waiting; anticipated and unanticipated.

Anticipated waiting, such as waiting for the results of a test or waiting for your book to be released from the publisher (ehm – especially if it’s WAAY longer than you expected it to be), we can plan for. While we may be impatient for the results, we also know it’s coming and can plan for it. We may plan to keep ourselves busy and keep our mind off the waiting. Or we may focus on staying positive or preparing ourselves for a poor outcome.

The second type of waiting is when you are waiting unexpectedly, such as waiting in line at the DMV or the grocery store. Waiting in traffic or for a delayed flight. Unanticipated waiting catches us off guard and often leaves us feeling out of control, frustrated or angry. Our plans are thwarted and can throw off other deadlines.

As business owners we are accustomed to being in control of many things. When we are forced to wait, particularly unexpectedly, we are definitely not in control, and that can be incredibly uncomfortable!

When we are waiting and feeling out of control we often go to two places:

Victimhood – “Why am I always in the slow lane”? “This happens to me every time I’m in a hurry”.

Frustration and blame – This has more of an angry tone to it. “This is why I never get my goals accomplished”. “Those kids are always slowing me down”.

I think we can all agree, neither of these places is healthy or helping us (or the people around us) in any way. Let’s take a look at how we can wait and choose how we respond.

Breathe. Taking a few breaths may slow you down and allow you to get ahold of yourself momentarily. You can also take this time to do some focused, meditative breathing that you always intend to do but never make the time for.

Be productive. Update your to-do list or your shopping list. Delete some of those emails that are nine months old. Have you not made time to call your mom in a while? This is it!

Practice being mindful and staying in the present. Do a short meditation or a focused prayer or intention setting. Be aware of what’s going on around you – how can you make the most of the situation? Can you be of service in any way?

Let go. Sometimes the best way to get unstuck is to not focus on the issue, in this instance waiting, and move on to something else. Oftentimes this letting go process is what breaks you free. Accept the situation you are in and do something else.

How you react to situations, particularly the unexpected or uncomfortable, is your choice. Being conscious of how you react to waiting is just one place to focus your attention this week.

There’s no denying it, if you keep doing the same thing you will keep getting the same results. The bigger your goal the bigger and bolder the actions you will need to take to accomplish it. Yet many of us stay stuck, busy, even unhappy because we are afraid of the risk involved in taking a bold step.

What does it mean to be bold? It means showing an ability to take risks. Being confident and courageous in your actions. Requiring yourself to be courageous and daring. It means being will to accomplish something despite the risks.

People who choose to be bold are inspiring not just because they get big things accomplished, but because they also instigate growth, progress, and movement for themselves and others around them, says Inc. magazine columnist and best-selling author Kevin Daum. It takes boldness to create Fresh Tracks.

The question quickly becomes what is a bold action for you?

Singing out loud in public? Showing your picture on your website? Having a voice and speaking up for yourself or sharing your opinion? Making a sales call? Asking for money? Quitting your job and risking security?

Here’s the thing. What’s bold for me is probably different than what’s bold for you. However, the way you feel after you make a bold move, after you push yourself and do something risky, that feeling is universal. Taking a bold action creates a powerful sense of strength inside of you. THAT feeling of empowerment and confidence is available to each of us. What’s required is taking the bold action.

In our Fresh Tracks with Kelly Robbins interview with Bold Betties founder Niki Koubourlis, Niki shares that tackling an outdoor adventure can be the catalyst for knowing that you are capable of way more than you previously thought. Conquering an outdoor adventure can give you the confidence to create a change in a different part of your life.

One bold move can be the catalyst to creating your Fresh Tracks.

The change that happens is not necessarily in the act itself, but it’s inside you. When you take a big, bold action there are feelings that go along with that! Fear is usually one of them.

After that comes the realization that you DID IT. There is confidence, pride, courage and much more. You become a different person. Who you are ‘being’ changes because you realize you can ‘be’ more. Be different than you were.

Your job is to capture the powerful feelings associated with the power in yourself, the “I did it!!!” feelings, and bring that confidence and the vibration of those feelings to the other areas of your life you are focusing on.

If you want to create Fresh Tracks you need to be bold. If you are too afraid to take the next step in your journey, take a bold step in another area. Perhaps an outdoor adventure. Or reading at a poetry slam. It shakes up your stuck, fearful energy and just may be the catalyst to the next tracks on your journey.

One of the things that stood out for me from my interview with NYT best-selling author Jen Sincero was a statement she made about being in the game. You want to make money. Perhaps you also want freedom, flexibility, to enjoy what you do and to feel like you are contributing to society.

In order to create any of that you’ve got to be swinging the bat and trying, at a minimum, to play the game. You have got to be playing in order to have even a slight chance of winning!! There are different levels to playing, but being in the game means you are doing more than ‘thinking about’ how you’d like to double your income and have a house on the beach. It means you are actively doing something to make it happen.

How are you playing the game is the next question to pose to yourself

There’s being in the game to win and there’s being in the game to not lose. And there’s sticking your toe in the water so you can say you are in the game but you aren’t really playing at all. You may not know your exact path to wealth right now, but taking action is how you figure it out. Taking big, focused action is how you play.

I was recently speaking with someone about his new business (over a few months) and he keeps putting off starting it because he didn’t know all the answers. He didn’t have everything figured out and was waiting to start until he did. He was taking weeks to do vision boards and attending networking groups in the hopes of knowing exactly who his clients would be and what they would want from him. And THEN he was going start reaching out and selling.

This idea of having it all figured out before you start quickly leads to broke and a business that never has a chance of making money because it never gets started. You aren’t helping anyone by thinking and planning and not taking action. You aren’t helping yourself by playing it safe.

Showing up vs actually playing

Other folks THINK they are in the game because they have a website and may network here and there, but they aren’t truly playing. They play in the realm of their comfort zone, which may be spending hours a day posting on social media or attending a networking event here and there. There is not much sales or business conversation happening. They show up and talk the talk, but they aren’t walking the walk. Results speak for themselves.

Like Jen said in our Fresh Tracks interview, there’s this place where you just have to get in the game and get started if you want to accomplish anything. Most of it you’ll figure out as you go along. If you aren’t even playing the game you can’t expect to win.

It’s easy to expect what you’ve always experienced to remain constant. Ultimately, you stay the same and don’t look for anything different because, why would you? It’s easy to lose a sense of magic because we are around the same experiences with the same results each day. It’s logical.

The 2017 total solar eclipse was a magical experience for me. We drove to Alliance, Nebraska and camped out on a ranch with 1000 other enthusiasts. It was a friendly, eclectic bunch and definitely expanded my experience of the world in many ways.

Doing something different and being around different types of people has given me the gift of coming home and running my life and business differently.

Just like the sky looked different during the total solar eclipse, I am now able to look at my business differently. Because anything is possible. If you want to create different results, such as earning a million dollars this month, you’ve got to see and expect different results. Perhaps magic. However, total solar eclipses don’t happen every day to get us out of ruts.

Let’s take a look at 3 ways to see and create magic around you each day

Do something different. Push yourself into an area you haven’t before! With your business, in relationships, in your daily routine. Try something big to get magical results. Be active rather than passive about your experiences and expect the unexpected.

Expect magical things to happen and you will see them. Just like I had to physically move myself to be in the magic of a total solar eclipse, you may have to get uncomfortable to experience your magic. My house in Colorado experienced a 93% partial eclipse, which is not the same experience as a total eclipse. When you do big things in your life, when you create Fresh Tracks, expect to see the magical results. You will have to do something different and expect different outcomes to experience magical results.

Actively look for the magic. Look through the world with fresh eyes, like everything is new and different. Know that magical experiences are always there, such as your next client or a million-dollar sale. If you aren’t looking odds are you won’t see them.

Someone wanting to take one of our marketing workshops was distraught. She felt she didn’t have the money and couldn’t justify that she was investing in herself again and not making any money in her business. Looking at her business through a different lens (mine)… she recently gave a talk, made over $600 and has more follow-up calls she can make. She also has two similar talks scheduled!

She is not seeing the money and progress she has made in her new business (the magic) she is focusing on lack so much she’s not even seeing what she’s manifesting! How easy it is for all of us to do this without knowing it!!

Sometimes driving over four hours to Alliance, Nebraska to experience a total solar eclipse is what you have to do in order to bring the magic back home. Sometimes you have to take a risk and step into a workshop to create your magic (like our Marketing with SOUL or Hand Raisers Workshops). Just sayin’ 🙂

A strategic leader is always recognizing ways to improve things. Things like processes and systems. Marketing. Budgets. Ways to serve clients. And more.

The tricky part of running a business is it’s easy to be working very hard, doing tasks you’ve designated that need to be done, but not being strategic in the direction you are leading your company. Daily busy-ness sneaks up on you and it’s easy to find yourself putting out constant fires and dealing with day-to-day events and not consistently driving your long-term vision and interests.

You may recognize this in yourself if your marketing is inconsistent or your income fluctuates regularly.

Are you a chance entrepreneur or a strategic entrepreneur?

From your marketing efforts to your work hours to the quality of the conversations you engage in, how strategically you approach your business directly effects your results.

In this week’s episode of Fresh Tracks I speak with author and speaker Dianna Booher about how Fresh Trackers can be strategic in their business and particularly be strategic in their communications. Beyond giving talks in your industry that are planned and scheduled, our daily communications play a vital role in our success.

When we communicate with prospects, even casually out in our community or when networking, we are making an imprint in how we manifest our goals and set the direction of our growth (Dianna Booher shares how here).

There’s business planning and goal setting to develop a strategic direction for your business. And then there’s acting strategically during life’s unplanned moments. Answering unexpected questions off the cuff AND staying strategic in your vision is a skill that we all can and should learn. Strategic communication is not a natural response for most of us, but it can be learned!

Taking time to set intentions before each event or interaction you engage in and learning to look at yourself and examine what areas of the way you run your business can use improvement are also ways we stay strategic as entrepreneurs.

You must take care of yourself first. We’ve all heard that statement before and can intellectually agree with the logic behind it. Yet, many of us still struggle to take care of ourselves. We are disciplined in many areas in life and business and still struggle with this one.

If you’ve ever paid attention to the pre-flight training from the airlines before take-off, you’ve heard the instructions in case of emergency to put the oxygen mask on yourself first – even before your kids. You can’t take care of anyone if you are passed out!

This same truth holds true for you as a business owner. You are literally the energy and force that fuels your business — no one else is. No one else can power it for you. If you run out of fuel or are full of contaminated fuel your business will suffer. You will work harder than needed. You will struggle to make decisions. You will doubt yourself. The worry or fear you experience will enter your business and permeate its essence. Contaminating decisions, products and interactions with others. And ultimately you are not the only one that suffers. So do all of your clients, vendors, suppliers, creditors, employees and stakeholders.

The clearer your mind and the healthier your spirit, the more able you are to serve the world in the biggest most powerful way possible. For many of us that is through our business.

Think about what that means to you and where in your life you are not taking care of yourself. Where is water leaking into your gas tank? What are one or two small things you can do to change that today?

In my monthly Success in Business Meditation we learn to begin our meditation by focusing on ourselves. I teach you a simple way to do this in just 10 minutes. THEN we are in a clean and focused place to move on to what we are creating with our business. We have the capacity to expand and give in a powerful and compelling way.

Mindfulness and meditation are just one of several ways you can ‘keep your gas tank clean’.

According to William Bridges, author of Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, each change or transition has three stages. They are Endings, the Neutral Zone and New Beginnings.

I am focusing on endings this week because they set the course for the next two. Why are endings so important? Unresolved endings impede our movement into the neutral zone, which is a necessary part of the transition process.

Are you struggling creating something new? It might because of how you ended what preceded it.

Take a look at how you’ve ended major events in your life. Marriages, relationships, businesses, trainings, and other commitments.

Objectively reviewing how you have (or have not) acknowledged the endings in your life can be an enlightening experience. Understanding how you’ve handled transitions in the past will ultimately allow you to be conscious during your current or next transition, giving you the opportunity to choose how you react.

Take some time now to reflect on changes you’ve experienced in your life. Are there any patterns you see? Let’s specifically take a look at how you handle your endings, as they affect how your beginnings start.

Change always requires you to let go of something before the new thing can start. This is the Law of Sacrifice. For example, you must end your job to step into retirement. You must end an unhealthy relationship before stepping into a healthy one. You must end making poor health choices and eating on the couch all night to enjoy a healthy and fit lifestyle.

Do you fight and resist endings? Do you acknowledge them and accept them? Do you avoid them or pretend they are not happening? Do you embrace them and welcome them? Are you usually not aware you are in an ending? Do you just want to hurry up and end so you can start your new thing?

It’s not that these experiences aren’t meant to end, but it’s how you handle them that is worth reflecting on. Remember, a caterpillar’s life must end before it cocoons and reemerges as a butterfly. The caterpillar doesn’t fight the metamorphosis, it eats and eats (preparation) to sustain itself through the transition.

The phoenix is another symbolic example of change. When the Phoenix perceives its impending death it ignites itself into a magnificent fire. In time, it reemerges from its own ashes – reborn, renewed, and very much alive.

How do you handle endings? Are you in one now and if so, what can you do to embrace the ending rather than fight or avoid it? How can you honor the ending as a part of your metamorphosis into the new?

There is nothing ruder and more frustrating than speaking to someone and they clearly aren’t listening to you. While the fact that they aren’t listening says more about them you, if you notice a pattern of people not listening when you speak it may be worthwhile to check-in to your own speaking habits.

According to an article in PR Daily, less than two percent of all people have had formal education on how to listen. Odds are there are a Lot of people not truly listening! But you can’t do much about other people’s listening skills.

Good communication begins and ends with you, as you are the only one you can control. Regardless if you are speaking or listening you want to feel good about how you handled your end of things and most importantly that you kept to your values and goals in the conversation.

The truth is if you feel people frequently aren’t listening to you you can feel disrespected, misunderstood, frustrated, embarrassed and your self-esteem can even plummet.

If you find when you speak people drift away and don’t listen, and again this is more than one person — you see a pattern here, follow these communication guidelines and see if changing your speaking style is in order.

When you speak are you:

Brief

Positive

Specific

Honest

Authentic

Coming from a place of love

If your speaking style meets this criteria for the most part, trying to understand the other person’s lack of engagement can be another route to take. Arrogance, pride, defensiveness, boredom and not wanting to be wrong are just a few reasons people tune-out.

Listening is, in fact, hard work and many people don’t realize they aren’t good listeners. As the speaker, your job is to be sure you are communicating as clearly as possible and evaluate if there is a different/better way to get your point across.